Study participants representing California’s CPFV/charter boat fishing communities shared similar feedback to the commercial fishing participants we heard about outcomes from California’s MPA network. On average, CPFV participants across California scored MPA outcomes poorly, and some reported negative impacts on their fishing livelihoods. Across the state, CPFV participants were dissatisfied with MPA management, monitoring, and enforcement, and many expressed concerns that MPAs might be negatively affecting marine resource health due to compaction of fishing effort in areas that remain open to fishing. 

Study Methods

We conducted five regional focus group conversations with 20 members of California’s CPFV fleet. See here for listing of CPFV regions and ports.

Focus group participants were asked a series of questions about social, economic, and environmental outcomes from California’s MPA network, and were asked to score these outcomes on a five-point scale from very low to very high. Study focus group participants also shared oral commentary about MPA network outcomes.

Due to logistics, impacts from COVID-19 and nearby wildfires, and/or lack of trust or interest in the project, we were not able to convene CPFV focus groups in two regions of California (Monterey Bay Region and Los Angeles-Long Beach Region).

CPFV participants scored the effects of MPAs on their fishing livelihoods as either negative or neutral. The data reveals some regional trends, where more southern California-based CPFV operators scored MPA livelihood impacts as worse than those from Northern parts of the state. Participant commentary indicates that MPAs in the North Coast region were less likely to have been placed in important fishing grounds compared to those in southern parts of the state.

Across the state, participants believed that the MPA network decreased their overall profits and negatively impacted their livelihoods at large by decreasing accessible fishing grounds and requiring longer travel distances to avoid fishing in MPAs. 

Participants reported that at least one CPFV operator left the industry due to the implementation of MPAs. Reported cumulative effects from the MPA network included increased safety concerns, additional fuel costs, higher density of CPFV operators in smaller areas, less overall fishing time per trip, and a decrease in the overall number of trips offered per day. This increased participants’ overall sense of uncertainty and worry about the CPFV business model in California. 

Some participants cited CPFV operators’ resilience in finding workarounds to maintain business viability, despite negative livelihood effects from MPAs.

Across the state, CPFV participants were dissatisfied with MPA management, monitoring, and enforcement. Many participants felt that managers did not effectively communicate information about MPA management goals/indicators of success during MPA implementation and beyond, and felt the implementation process and ongoing management efforts lacked meaningful consideration of CPFV industry conditions and input by CPFV operators. Several participants described frustration about managers’ poor communication about how information from MPA monitoring studies would inform management decisions. Many participants shared frustration about enforcement efforts, which they believed were insufficient.

CPFV focus group participants expressed a continuing sense of betrayal related to the MPA implementation process, which they believed lacked meaningful consideration of fishing community input. Several believed that the information they shared in good faith with managers about their priority fishing grounds had been used against them, as many MPAs were designated in the fishing grounds they cited as important to their operations. Some participants felt that the MPA implementation process did not include sufficient consideration of fishing community socioeconomic information, nor sufficient consideration of the cumulative impacts of other management restrictions already in place.

Many CPFV participants said they were unaware of ongoing MPA management efforts, and were frustrated by a perceived lack of opportunities for meaningful involvement of CPFV fishing communities  in ongoing management efforts. Many participants expressed their desires for adaptive management approaches to MPAs, such as using rotational closures, which they said had been promised to them by managers during the MPA implementation process.

Participants expressed concerns related to a perceived lack of clear monitoring goals and a perceived failure to communicate results from past monitoring studies with the CPFV fishing community. Many focus group members shared that they were not aware of ongoing monitoring efforts nor monitoring study findings.

Participants expressed dissatisfaction with a perceived lack of opportunities for CPFV owner/operators to participate in the design and implementation of MPA monitoring studies. Some participants suggested that MPA monitoring should occur much more frequently, in order to capture  monthly and seasonal changes on the water.

Many participants discussed seeing very little on-the-water enforcement presence, despite seeing substantial illegal fishing activity in MPAs, specifically by private recreational fishing boats. Participants recalled that reports of this illegal activity to CDFW wardens often went unaddressed, though some participants acknowledged CDFW’s limited capacity for enforcement. Participants also reported inconsistent enforcement efforts for CPFV vessels versus private recreational vessels, with CPFV operators being more targeted by enforcement. Many study participants from across the state said that CPFV operators have acted as de facto enforcement by confronting offending vessels and informing them about MPA boundaries/regulations and maintaining a culture of self-policing and peer pressure among CPFV owners/operators.

The majority of participants expressed negative or neutral views of MPA ecological outcomes. Many participants were worried that MPAs negatively affected marine resource health due to compaction of fishing effort in areas that remain open to fishing.

Several study participants did note some positive MPA outcomes for species such as rockfish and lingcod. They believed MPAs protected nursery habitat for juvenile marine species, but still had doubts about whether these outcomes have had a positive net effect on the quantity and quality of harvestable resources available to the CPFV industry.

Many participants expressed a desire to see monitoring results in order to better understand the ecological outcomes from MPAs.